The Odyssey: An Apps Screen Time Discipline
Like any older Gen Z bordering Milennial, I grew up watching the technology thrives and grow like a childhood friend. We are always the ones who tasted every new things and changes of technology when it went rapidly developed. We grew up with it and we became very fluent of using it, and are very depended of it. That included, smartphones.
So I would be a big fat liar if I said that disciplining oneself to not check any social media apps at the first time is an easy feat when we always stayed glued on our phone twenty-four seven. It is not. It was never easy, because whether we like it or not, our phone had became a necessity in our life despite what all people had said about how bad it was to depend on a small block of metal and plastic.
Especially, in the term of our fascination in the digital interaction in various social media apps such as, once upon a time, Facebook, now and then Instagram, Twitter, and the most recent popular apps TikTok. Our form of entertainment, community, and communication are all in one social media apps. It became very hard to resist the addiction to always checking.
I was very aware of this addiction. I tried to not always open my social media apps too often. But, I always tempted when I heard my notifications.
For staying away longer, I turned off the apps notification settings, so I won’t be tempted to check my notifications of who liked and commented on my posts, who replied my comments, who tagged me in their posts or stories, exception for any direct messages (DM) because I felt bad to neglect people who messaged me. It wasn’t very effective because after I got to reply the DMs. I then scrolled through my feeds, and without knowing, I just spent hours wasting my time for small temporary endorphin dose.
Then after feeling fed up for not having a self-control, I braced myself to log off my social media accounts and log in only for once in a week. It was rather effective, but I began to neglect my friends’ DMs which made me feel bad because sometimes they messaged me something important.
When I first discovered an ‘Apps Screen Time’ setting on my little old Samsung Galaxy phone, it was accidental. At first, I did not know what is this setting for and I had not really paid any mind to it because I was trying to clean apps cache on my phone. But then, I saw a Reels video that briefly mentioned about ‘Apps Screen Time’, and that piqued my interest because I had seen that on my phone settings. Of course, I had to check the thing now and try it.
Turned out, it is a setting that will lock your chosen apps on your phone according to the timer you set. When you have spent your time to the time limit you have set, it will immediately close your apps and you cannot open it until the next day.
At first, it was quite hard for me to get used to the abrupt way the apps I was on were closed, despite there was a notification a minute before. And sometimes I cheated my way by changed the timer setting so that I could have more time in the apps. It canceled the purpose of the system. That was me being childishly spiteful towards the rule. Even though I was the one who made it. Ironic.
But, I got over it. I was slowly being disciplined in my spending time on social media. I still turned off most of my notifications and successfully only checked the apps when I only got a direct message notification. The screen time had me got used to close my apps after lurking for a moment checking my feeds and stories, so I didn’t waste my screen time and couldn’t answer my DMs.
All in all, I got the benefit from the screen time. I no longer checked my social media apps so often when I was bored, and I got to treat it like it is only something that I had to check when I had a time or I wanted to message my friends. For me, it was like I finally had a control of myself. And I am quite proud of that.
